Newt Gingrich, the Republican presidential hopeful who has surged to the top
of the opinion polls, risked alienating core voters by proposing that
millions of illegal immigrants be allowed to stay in the US.

The former Speaker of the House of Representatives said "community boards" should be set up across America to judge which of the estimated 11 million people living there without permission should be deported and which given the right to remain.

"If you've been here 25 years and you have three kids and two grandkids, you've been paying taxes and obeying the law, you belong to a local church, I don't think we're going to separate you from your family, uproot you forcefully and kick you out," he said in a debate on national security in Washington.

The remark was compared to Texas Governor Rick Perry's claim in an earlier debate that Republicans opposing subsidised education for the children of illegal immigrants were "heartless", which infuriated the conservative Tea Party movement.

It threatened to damage Mr Gingrich's prospects just days after he completed a remarkable comeback. Having been written off in June, when most of his staff resigned, he now leads one national poll and is competing for the top spot in several others.

Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor and favourite to win the nomination, said the policy amounted to an "amnesty" and would "only encourage more people to do the same thing".

Ryan Rhodes, a Tea Party leader in Iowa, the first state to vote on the party's nomination in January, described the proposal as a "liberal idea" that was "pretty reminiscent" of Mr Perry's comment.

"I think Gingrich will take a hit for it here," he told The Daily Telegraph. "This is an issue that is near and dear to a lot of conservatives".

Candidates attacked Barack Obama for pledging to allow $500 billion (£310 billion) in military cuts after the congressional "super committee" failed to make a deal on reducing the budget deficit.

Mr Perry called the cuts "totally and absolutely irresponsible", suggesting that if he were an "honourable man", US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta, who has said they will leave the US military a "hollow force", should resign in protest.